Military PCS moving expenses: deduction and reimbursements

Two separate questions

Publication 3 treats a military move as two questions. First: is what the government gave or paid you taxable? Second: if you paid costs yourself, can you deduct them? The answers are different, and mixing them up leads to either missed deductions or double counting.

What the government pays is not income

You do not include the value of moving and storage services the government provides because of a PCS. You also leave out dislocation allowance, temporary lodging expense, temporary lodging allowance and move-in housing allowance. Table 2 of the publication lists those as moving allowances alongside moving household and personal items, trailers or mobile homes, and storage.

If your total reimbursements and allowances exceed your actual moving costs, the excess is included in wages on your W-2. If a reimbursement other than the four excluded allowances exceeds cost and is not on the W-2, you must still report the excess on line 1h of Form 1040. When your family moves to or from a different place than you do, the government-paid costs of both separate moves stay out of income.

Who can deduct, and for what move

The deduction is limited to active-duty members moving under a military order as a result of a permanent change of station. A PCS includes a move from home to your first post, from one permanent post to another, and from your last post to your home or a nearer point in the United States, within one year of ending active duty or the period allowed by the Joint Travel Regulations. If a spouse or dependent moves after the member deserts, is imprisoned or dies on active duty, a PCS for them includes a move to the place of enlistment or induction, a home of record or a nearer U.S. point.

What you may deduct

You may deduct the reasonable unreimbursed expenses of moving you and your household. Two categories qualify: household goods and personal effects (including trailer hauling, packing, crating, in-transit storage and insurance) and travel. Storage and insurance count only for any 30 consecutive days after the goods leave your former home and before delivery to the new one. You cannot deduct the cost of furniture or goods you bought along the way.

Travel covers lodging within limits, car costs and airfare, but never meals. For the car you choose either actual out-of-pocket costs such as gas and oil or the standard mileage rate, which the 2025 edition prints as 21 cents a mile. Parking fees and tolls are added to either method. Unnecessary side trips and lavish lodging are out. A foreign move expands the list to include moving goods to and from storage and storing them while the new location is the main job location outside the United States.

A worked example

This example is ours, using only the publication's rules. A corporal pays $1,000 to ship personal goods herself, drives 600 miles, pays $150 for lodging and $20 in tolls. The car costs 600 x $0.21 = $126. The total is $1,000 + $126 + $150 + $20 = $1,296. If nothing else was reimbursed, the deduction is $1,296. If the Army reimbursed $1,500 of non-excluded allowances against those costs, the deduction is zero and the extra $204 of reimbursement is income. Never deduct costs that an excluded allowance or government service already covered.

Spouses, dependents and split households

When the military moves a spouse or dependent to or from a different location than the member, the publication treats those moves as a single move to the new main job location for deduction purposes, and the government-provided services for each separate location stay out of income. A household member is anyone who has both the former home and the new home as a main home. A tenant or employee is not one unless you can claim that person as a dependent.

Common slip-ups

Deducting what an excluded allowance already paid for is the most frequent error: the publication says not to deduct expenses for services the government provided or that were reimbursed by an allowance you did not include in income. The second is claiming meals, which are never deductible here. The third is storing goods for longer than the 30 consecutive days the rule allows. The fourth is forgetting that a move after leaving service only counts if it happens within one year or the Joint Travel Regulations period.

How to report it

Figure the deduction on Form 3903. The form's instructions show how to compute qualified expenses that exceed your reimbursements and allowances, including the excluded dislocation, lodging and move-in amounts. Use a separate Form 3903 for each move. The deduction carries to Schedule 1 (Form 1040), line 14.

Sources

• IRS Publication 3, Armed Forces' Tax Guide (2025): Moving Expenses (Are Reimbursements, or the Value of Services Provided by the Government When I Move, Included in My Income; Which Moving Expenses Are Deductible and Which Aren't; Foreign Moves; How To Report Moving Expenses); Table 2 moving allowances. Read November 2, 2026.

Edition read: Publication 3 (2025), the edition posted on irs.gov on the read date, for tax year 2025 returns filed in 2026. Dollar figures below are the 2025 figures printed in that edition and change every year. This page summarizes the publication and does not replace it.